The Virtues
by Dr. Jekyl
Summary: Prudence. Temperance. Justice. Courage. Forgiveness. Five virtues, each embodied by a Titan.


_I was never happy with the final virtue and, while re-reading this the other day, it occured to me that I already had the perfect concluding verse in the second chapter. The two have since been merged into this single piece, and I think it works better for it._

**-I: Prudence -**

_Little White Lie_

Starfire is unaccustomed to lying.

It's not a trait valued amongst her people who, with few exceptions, firmly subscribe to the philosophy of 'act now, apologize later', or, as they put it rather more poetically, 'follow your heart'. They live for the moment. It's not surprising, then, that deception does not come naturally to such a straightforward race.

What is surprising is that she's so good at it.

Perhaps it's because the other Titans think her incapable of deliberately uttering a falsehood. Perhaps it's because she's not really lying at all (or so she tells herself), merely editing out selected details. The horrific vision of a future imperfect must remain intact enough that her friends are compelled to avoid it, yet the vision must also be tempered by enough hope to ensure that they do not see the task as insurmountable. She understands enough of human nature now to know that this must be so.

So not a word is spoken of Beast Boy's cowardice or Cyborg's disrepair, not a breath of Raven's insanity or Nightwing's abandonment of his friends passes her lips. Instead she tells a tale of four wise but lonely heroes and how they banded together once more to offer their younger selves a second chance at a better life. Together.

She lies.

She lies, and she smiles and she laughs while she does it, and they hang on her every word.

**-II:Temperance -**

_Boundary Conditions_

Robin's life has always revolved around lines.

Lines give shape and form to an otherwise chaotic world. Lines exist to keep to you safe, keep you sane, keep you from falling so far that you hit the ground and die.

Light and Dark. Good and Evil. Friend and Enemy. Lines, all.

Lines are tricky things, however. They can be cut so that you fall, unknowing, to your fate. Some lines can't be seen, when black and white are so closely intertwined that everything is grey and all you can do is choose where you think the line should be and hope that you're standing on the right side when everything is clear again. Lines in the sand, mutable, that change from moment to moment. And there are some lines that don't even exist until you cross them for the first time.

There is a line between obsession and madness, Robin knows. He's seen first hand that this is so in the person of his mentor, his father, a man who is quite, quite mad, not because he crossed the line, but because it had never existed for him. There is no telling where the obsession stops and the man begins, or even if the man called 'Bruce' still exists anymore or is utterly subsumed by the persona of Batman.

Robin had seen this and drawn himself a line that said: there will come a point where I will stop. I will be able to, if not actually hang up the mask, then not be Robin for a time. I will let go. I can have fun. Have friends. Have a life and a future beyond the thrill of the chase.

But now he finds he can't. Slade haunts his every waking moment and torments him in his dreams. Mocking. Challenging. Always just a hairsbreadth from reach. He burns for Slade's capture, spends endless nights studying Cyborg's footage of their fights, searching for weaknesses; days of pounding the streets pumping dealers and pimps and bottom-rung thugs for leads. It is obsession, he knows. The others are concerned about him. But he can't stop himself.

And he is no longer sure where Robin ends and he begins.

**-III Justice-**

_Have Not_

Cyborg is often asked to volunteer a moment of his time at the various associations for the disabled scattered around the town.

There seem to be more of them every year. More people are injured by whatever lunatic scheme some not-quite-so-super villain has concocted, which means more organizations dedicated to helping them adapt to their new lives, which in turn means more speeches and social events for him. Cyborg: poster child for the maimed and the disfigured and the differently abled.

Nonetheless, he accepts every invite, even if it means he doesn't have a weekend free for two months. It's not because it's good press for the team - though he knows it is, and that he's getting to be a damned good public speaker too - but because he almost feels he owes it to them, for being quick enough and strong enough to only save them from death, not from pain and loss.

To them, especially to the children, he thinks he is a symbol of hope, a sign that they, too, might one day rise from their chairs and walk again unaided, that they might feel the touch of a lover's hand and offer that touch in return, that scarred masses of skin and tissue can be replaced with something almost as good as the real thing. Better than the real thing. That they, too, one day will be able to lift buildings. Save the world.

But even as he talks and mingles and smiles, he can't but help that feel that the hope he symbolizes is false. Not one amongst them is as lucky as he is, to be born to brilliant parents, a father and mother who had the means to push technology to its limit to save a life. His life. He strides amongst them as a demigod, knowing all the while that few will feel through synthetic limbs like he does, that fewer still will walk again. While the technology is there, the money simply isn't. And won't be, not for a good, long time.

Sometimes, he sees in the eyes of the oldest, and in the young and prematurely wise, that they, too, know the hope he symbolizes is false. They've already learnt the hard way that life isn't fair.

**-IV: Courage-**

_Niche_

Beast Boy knows he is the weakest member of the team.

It shouldn't be this way. His power is the strongest, the most adaptable out of all of them. Sure, he can't make cool gadgets or go all jujitsu like Robin or throw energy like Star or sonic blasts like Cy or move things with his mind like Raven, but he has all the vast array of nature's offensive and defensive weapons at his disposal. He can survive the most hostile environments known to human - and alien - kind because, somewhere out there, there's an animal that's evolved just to fill that particular ecological niche. Come nuclear apocalypse, Beast Boy will be the last man standing. Or thing crawling; the humble cockroach can take almost anything you dish out at it, after all.

And yet, week in, week out, he's the one to take the worst pounding. He's the one sent flying through the air into walls, picked off from a distance, dropped, trampled on, run over, burnt, sliced, shot, drowned, shredded, folded, spindled and mutilated. He's just not quite quick enough on his mental feet to pick the right shape at the right time, and he knows it. Most nights after battles he lies awake on his bunk and reviews the fight and tries to work out what he could have done better, _should_ have done better. But the truth of it is, he knows, is that he's jack of all trades and master of none.

He knows the others know this too, and he also knows why they keep him around despite it. If their lives were some sort of a twisted sitcom, he'd be the Comic Relief Guy. It's his function in life to keep the others from getting too serious, to remind them that inside of every adolescent longing to be adult there still beats the heart of a child who wants nothing more than to eat candy and play games all day. They need someone to let them know that it's ok to be childish. More importantly, they need someone to let them know that it's ok fail every now and then.

They need that reminder, more so than anyone else he's ever met. So it doesn't matter how much it hurts to have his ass kicked every week or that some days he wakes up dreading the fights the day might bring. It doesn't matter that his greatest fear is that one day it'll all depend on him and he'll fail because he's not smart like Robin and Raven or brave and bold like Starfire and Cyborg. He'll soldier on and crack jokes and be the best annoying little brother he can be, because they need him to.

Of course, he couldn't put that feeling, those thoughts into words, even if he tried.

**-V: Forgiveness-**

_Hypocrite_

Raven could see how it might be done.

_Could_ be done. Find that particularly emotive memory, concentrate, focus her power and_ twist_ the universe like so much taffy around her mental fingers, twist until that stone remembered it wasn't always stone but a girl with golden hair and frightened eyes…

She'd frozen all of Jump City once. Less than a week ago she'd turned back time for the entire world and some parts beyond it. She'd aged and youthened herself without thought in a heartbeat. Rewinding time a year or so for a single individual shouldn't be too hard. Wouldn't be too hard.

It might even be easy.

And yet she couldn't do it. Wouldn't, rather. She had realised that the moment she'd laid eyes on the statue today. The wound was still too deep and she could not forgive, not fully, not yet.

She knew very well what that made her.


End file.
